Revived Ralph Walker
Wows ​“Queen Of Spin”

A cozy wood fire burned in the hearth. Dozens of people laced up their skates in a chalet-like lobby with charming paintings on the walls. Meanwhile, a champion spinning star signed books and skated.

The scene was the Ralph Walker Skating Rink on State Street ​‚where on Wednesday local skaters brushed shoulders with two-time national champion and Guinness Book of Records-holder Lucinda Ruh.

While Ruh’s appearance was a special event, the humming activity revealed a more everyday development: How in recent years a largely neglected and underused skating rink has become a busy, hopping cold-weather spot.

Ruh, known in the skating world as the ​“queen of spin,” was at New Haven’s only surviving skating rink on a book tour for her memoir, Frozen Tear Drop. She brought along her four students, all aspiring champs in their own right who train with the former star at the Dorothy Hamill Rink in Greenwich.
Click here for a recent interview with the two-time national figure skating champion.

After signing a book for 5‑year-old Angelina DeLeon-Colombo, who wants to grow up to be a skater, Ruh looked around and sang the praises of the Ralph Walker Skating Rink.

“It reminds me of Europe, Switzerland, a kind of chalet house with the rink. Just the snow is missing,” she said.

It wasn’t always that way.

Parks Department Supervisor Tom Verderame, who oversees the rink and other parks facilities, like the Carousel in Lighthouse Point Park, was also on hand for the signing. ​“I am just so proud of this place,” he said.

As recently as eight years ago, he joked, ​“we were collecting money in a cigar box.”

By that he meant, the city had not found a way to manage the rink profitably and to make it a place where families really would want to go.

Deputy Director of Parks Christy Hass said that from the 1960s to the 1970s, skating rinks were more common. New Haven boasted three. In addition to the Ralph Walker, Edgewood Park’s Coogan Pavilion and East Shore Park’s Salperto Rink hosted skaters.

Cogan is now a skateboard run. The former Salperto Rink is used for all manner of park uses, but no more ice-skating, said Hass.

Hass said that by the 1970s many New England towns had found rinks difficult to maintain. ​“It was a specialized skill to operate [them].”

The turning point for Ralph Walker came when the city decided to convert it to operate as one of several ​“enterprise funds.” These, like the carousel or the municipal golf course, generate their own income. All revenue goes directly back into upgrading the facility.

Hass said that attempts to make the rink successful with several small operators didn’t work out. A ​“progression” of approaches ended up in the city hiring Rink Management Solutions, which has operated the Ralph Walker rink for five years.

During that time the company collaborated with the city on improvements, including the fireplace, the repainting, and the laying down of appropriate matting in the room that Ruh called the ​“chalet” where people enter, gather, and change from shoes to skates.

“We painted and we rebuilt to make it a place you’d want to bring your family to,” said Hass.

Verderame itemized specific improvements: ​“The dasher boards were falling off and had wire fence instead of plexiglass around the dasher boards. In the last eight years, we have put in new dasher boards, new plexiglass, new rubber flooring inside and out, a new heating system, fixed the fireplace, added two locker rooms and a party room.”

The city bought a used Zamboni from the Columbus Yellow Jackets, an NHL franchise team. And it hung paintings of city park scenes on the upper walls of the main chalet room

“All the improvements were paid by the revenue generated by the rink,” Verderame reported.

The management company receives 30 percent of net operating income after direct expenses and a management fee of $32,500 is deducted. The city receives 70 percent.

“Last year the rink grossed $173,640, which is fourfold over the $60,000 the rink made in 1999,” Verderame reported.

The ice looked well-maintained Wednesday as Ruh’s students, after huddling up like a team, prepared to go out.

Onto the ice Ruh sent one of her four students, 13-year-old Yuki Tsuchiya. She executed a 20-second spin. She turned about two times per second, Ruh estimated.

Ruh said during her years as a competitor she’s been clocked at six revolutions per second.

She is also the holder of many other records, including the Guinness Book of Records’s most continuous revolutions on a single skate without stopping: 115.

Kids peered in at the young pros as they did their turns and Ruh worked with one of them, 12-year-old Katie Yang, of Scarsdale, on her ​“checkout.” That’s how she’s supposed to come out of a jump

“They all have the potential to be champions,” Ruh said of her students.

In her book, which she described as much more than a sports autobiography, are also lessons in character that she is trying to instill in the kids. She said she has known many great athletes who excelled. Then, after the laurels had been delivered, they went to their hotel rooms and didn’t know what to do.

Of her kids, she said to be a champion, ​“They’ll have to live their dreams without losing themselves.”

Maybe a little of that applies to the rink itself.

Tom Verderame looked around. He couldn’t recall any great skating stars who had graced it before Lucinda Ruh. He did recall many New Haveners who stop him on the street and tell him they learned to skate at the Ralph Walker Skating Rink.

Many local hockey players have also put in endless revolutions around the ice.

Verderame recalled the Bart Guida League in the late 1970s, named for the former mayor who was an an arden hockey fan.

“We are trying to bring a hockey league back” to New Haven, Verderame said. ​“Maybe next year.”

The rink is open Nov. 1 to March 31. The hours are Monday and Wednesday from noon to 1:30; Friday from noon to 1:30 and from 8 to 9:20 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, from 2:30 to 3:50 p.m. and from 6 to 7:30 p.m.